Maine 2009 Registered Sex Offenders In The Workplace Calendar!

Each month we'll take a look at a local citizen who has gone above and beyond to make Portland a better place to live and work. Mister January, Carl H. Anderson, is an employee of the Shipyard Brewery and has achieved the distinguished honor of a statutory rape hat-trick! Yes, three counts of gross sexual assault, or "Engaging in a sexual act with another person and the other person is not the actor's spouse and has not attained the age of 14 years."

Congratulations to Carl and his family. Who ever said mustaches were creepy? Look for him on the Shipyard Brewery tour!

Landlords Without Boarders.

Wow. There are a lot of shitty apartments in Portland, Maine. And it feels like we've seen them all in the past few days. All were two or three bedroom places priced between $1,000 and $1,350 per month: not top dollar in Portland, but not bottom dollar by any means. All were advertised either in the local paper, craigslist or just by a sign in the window. Most were either on the peninsula, near downtown or out by the University.

So let's see... there were three apartments that looked out onto gas station parking lots, one that had been painted black and pink by this weird African dude named Lado (the bathroom ceiling was also collapsing), one with laundry machines in a basement accessible only from the outside of the house, one next door to a Midas muffler shop on a busy street and four with dropped styrofoam ceilings (one of these with florescent office lights built in).

Then there was the basement apartment or "sub-dwelling" that the happy-go-lucky landlord "sometimes" occupied a part of. I recognized this man from the night he almost backed over me with his SUV in front of that very apartment as I walked my dog. He had yelled "Why don't you try wearing some other color besides black, moron!"

There was the place where we'd have to mow the lawn ourselves, the place with a loud common stairway above the only place a bed could go, the place that we'd need to flush out the furnace water every 30 days and the apartment with the bedroom looking out onto a home for mentally retarded adults. That place had a sweet non-functional fireplace and a landlord with a dyed mustache who lived upstairs.

There was an apartment that, during the day, always had a stretch Hummer parked in front, as there was a neighbor who moonlighted as a chauffeur. It was the early evening when we saw the place and we were lucky enough to see her leaving for work. She was about 21, tall and emaciated with a tight black polyester suit on and a cocked top hat, made-up like a prostitute.

Another place smelled so awful I almost threw up. There was a poor Pug dog crated in the bedroom, large feathers strewn about and a cat with no tail running around peeing on things; there was also a large boat stranded in the front yard. The landlord drove his Vespa across the grass to greet us, wearing a bicycle helmet.

We knew of a house on our block where the occupants owned a giant lynx with a chain-link collar. That place came up for rent but unfortunately it looked as if the lynx had trashed the place.

One apartment had exclusive access to a storage attic: at least 2,000 square feet of hot, unfinished space. Outside the ground-floor rental unit was a group of sunburned wiggers smoking and drinking at ten in the morning, bobbing and weaving to the sounds from a boom box underneath what would have been our baby's room.

The pièce de résistance was a tiny, dilapidated house out in South Portland that butted up to a sea of mammoth Citgo oil tanks, each seemingly the size of a football stadium. The neighbors had cars up on cinderblocks and kids wove through the streets of the weird little neighborhood on their bicycles alongside big-rig oil trucks.

We did find one place that we love. But it's one of two places that overtly doesn't want to rent to us because we have a baby. And a dog. And two cats. Apparently the downstairs neighbors are very sensitive to noise, so the landlord wants us (including our dog and baby) to meet with them. If the neighbors give us the seal of approval, then we're in! Good thing I didn't mention our snow leopard!

Baby Börn.

It's been a strange time of overt happiness for me this past week, the first week of my daughter's life. Like I don't even seem to care that my taxes, prepared 90 minutes before the deadline, have me owing over $9,000. Or that we gave notice on our beloved apartment and need to find a place by June 1. I guess it all takes a back seat for now.

I tried to take some contract work yesterday and it was a disaster. I was late to both appointments and couldn't do either job; I fumbled my way through and ended up just apologizing and leaving. On the way to the first appointment, I was trapped in a miles-long traffic jam on 295. The next exit wasn't for 10 miles, so traffic just sat there. People were turning off their engines and getting out of their cars to smoke cigarettes and stretch their legs on the median. Eventually I couldn't deal anymore and busted a U-turn across the steeply carved drainage median and found my way via county roads.

At my second appointment, I had to meet with a recruiter at a life insurance agency. He had slicked-back hair and smelled of sugarless gum. His office was festooned with successories and laminated "service pyramids". He looked a lot like Michael Scott and needed me to run wires through his office wall. He was wanting to connect his laptop with a new plasma TV to show powerpoint slides to his prospective recruits. Unfortunately I don't do in-wall wiring and so I told him I'd transfer the work order to someone else.

Then came the soft sell. He started to ask me questions about where I live and my family, angling for a policy sale. He fished out two creepy Lance Armstrong-style wristbands that said "LIFE HAPPENS" from a bulk bag of thousands, acknowledging that they might be "a bit big for the little one yet, ha ha ha."

I was frustrated and dazed when I left the insurance office and drove toward home. I was hungry and a Wendy's drew me into its drive-through. I got my food and drifted into the adjacent WalMart parking lot, shoring up next to a white Ford Windstar. I ate my food, shifting my focus between the Windstar, the Wendy's and the WalMart. I wondered why the Windstar had the word "Sport" splashed in teal across the front quarter panel. Maybe because it had alloy rims?

I wondered why the wristbands didn't say "DEATH HAPPENS" as I tossed them into the Wendy's bag with the detritus of my lunch, crumpled it up and headed home to see my baby girl.

Sketchy Days.

A three-year-old drew this picture of me yesterday. It really captures my state of mind well, i think. When do kids stop being able to see into people's souls so well? Soon he'll be drawing prototypical houses with smokey chimneys and dump trucks and stuff, but for now he's almost clairvoyant. Ellis is the son of a client of mine here in Portland. When he drew this picture, I was three days into major surgery on his dad's only work computer, and I was very stressed about not losing any data and about him being offline for so long.

Also on my mind was the fact that I'm unemployed (I barter with Ellis's dad for picture-framing services). And that rent is past due, and that my former employer is probably not going to give me my final paycheck just to be a dick, and that we can't afford our apartment anymore so in 6 weeks we'll be moving to god-knows-where (someplace where they don't care that I'm unemployed?), and that our car is literally falling apart, and oh yeah, that we're having a daughter two weeks from today.

On the brighter side, I have applied for three good-looking jobs recently, all of which I'm strongly qualified for. Hopefully by the time my daughter can draw pictures of me, I won't look so lost.

Telephone Anxiety.

A symptom of my depression and anxiety is that I hate the telephone. I hate answering it and I hate calling people. Yet I have a fancy phone and lots of minutes and options. I guess maybe the options are all ways to circumvent talking. I rely on voicemail to field the calls, my data plan enables email on my phone, and unlimited text messaging allows me to reply to many voicemails without having to talk to the person. In fact, did you know you can deposit a message in someone's voicemail box without even calling them? I LOVE that!

Ironically, I don't really use my caller ID because it doesn't matter who's calling; I won't answer. Maybe the best thing would be to not have a phone, and maybe subscribe to a voicemail service so I'd have a phone number, but not a thing that rings. This Google service lets you manage a voicemail number via the web.

Researching "telephobia", I have come across some interesting observations. Check out this bizarre poem:

"The telephone, my nemesis! Spawn of Alex Bell.
The 1880 genesis, connecting Earth and Hell!"

I can identify with this person:

"Perhaps you can trace your phone anxiety to something someone said to you on the phone or maybe you have a fear of something that may be said to you on a call. Not many people understand why I don't answer my phone, and I learned not to care what they think. When you turn the ringer off, you will never know if it rings."

A doctor's insight:

"Fear or anxiety accompanying the use of the telephone is a symptom that is not uncommon. In my own experience it has appeared exclusively in male patients. In the majority of cases in which it has been encountered, it is relieved fairly readily by treatment. The symptom most often appears in the patients' discourse at the time when they are occupied with material from the oedipal phase."

I guess the oedipal part means people get anxious about having to be in the middle of a situation, maybe being forced to make a decision about something or to choose a side? Anyway, if you call me and I don't answer, don't take it personally.

Manimal.

I've been reading, in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, about the death instinct, the tendency towards destruction. I also have been fascinated by Freud's assertion that civilization has done little to tame the beast in man and that we still inherently want to kill one another as a form of self-preservation (Darwinism in a sense).

This got me thinking about about my time living in Seattle, a place that prizes political correctness above all else. I felt that many people there, while PC on the surface, were terribly angry and hateful. It seems the more you constrict people's ability to say what they really feel, the more volitile people become and their true animal nature moves closer to the surface.

"...men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. [Man is a wolf to man.] Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check...

In spite of every effort, these endeavours of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness. The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellowmen, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will."

Hell, No.

Remember my new job? Yeah, well, that didn't work out so well.

Over the course of seven weeks, my "guaranteed" 20 hours per week had slipped to between 11-13 hours, my initial rate of $45/hour had slipped to $30, and my boss began picking and choosing which hours he felt like paying me for.

According to his twisted logic, you can't charge a client more than he wants to pay. So if a job takes me 6 hours to do, my Korean boss, Hans (what up with that name, dogg?) would chicken out and charge the client for 2 hours, at my expense. Then when I'd object, Hans would attack me, usually via email, CC:ing my colleagues, and insist that I am being naive and tacky.

Hans' accent is eerily Kim Jong Il (in Team America), as is his disposition. He runs a struggling PR firm and I suppose the IT company is a side project to keep himself afloat. He's always swearing at someone or throwing temper tantrums. Every email I would send to the group would immediately be replied to all with a scathing personal attack, usually based on an ESL-related misunderstanding.

So last Wednesday, Hans dramatically called a meeting inviting everyone to attend, the agenda being to discuss my "inability to follow clear instructions." It was during this meeting that Hans screamed across the table at me telling me I am inflexible and difficult to work with and that we should part ways because I'm more of a headache than I'm worth.

I can be stubborn and call people on their attitudes, but I never did that with Hans. I knew from the very beginning that he was an immature drama queen, but I also knew I needed the money so I'd better kiss ass anyway, which I did. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for not walking into his traps on several occasions.

I'm almost expecting a final fuck-you in the form of Hans withholding my last paycheck, even though I gracefully excused myself after he skewered me in Wednesday's meeting. If that turns out to be the case, I will enjoy writing letters to all of the clients I worked with explaining how Hans stole money from a good worker with a baby 3 weeks away and asking them to boycott his firm.

My Boss Is A Hateful Sadist.

That is all.

Drunk Blogging.

Although I'm not drunk now, I Treo'd the following stream-of-consciousness when I was drunk indeed, a year or so ago in Brooklyn.

And while I'm not drunk currently, I am at a bar and on my second Moinette. In that spirit, here's what was on my mind this time last year...

stuff:
violent femmes' self-titled.
Dinosaur jr.
Fate. Luck. Love. Sex. Friends. Booze.
irony(/)wit.
Fashion/style.
old/new tom waits.
obesity.
The bus.
Losing weight/gaining.
Touring then/ touring now.
city/suburbs.
$70 per hour/ $30 per hour.
Dating?
family. Sara.
Maine/nyc.
what's so great about nyc? (maybe that ppl have stories and/or are passionate about something. Or are they just lame. Or something in between. Or neither?).

207 Wiggaz Be Havin' Dat F.A.S.

Portland, Maine has a bizarre abundance of wiggers in their teens and twenties seemingly either having been kicked in the head by a horse or born with fetal-alcohol syndrome.

Why Portland? Perhaps, it's a perfect storm: Maine is, as Barbara Ehrenreich says in Nickel and Dimed, the whitest state in the country (i guess somebody here needs to step up and be black), Maine is economically depressed, leaving Portland, its largest city, a regional destination for social services (cue the parade of impoverished, drunk mothers-to-be). And lastly, Portland experiences massive brain drain, the citizenry leaving only its pock-marked dunces limping behind.

We're So Fucked.

OK, now that I'm going to be a dad, I guess I'm getting more serious about my political feelings. I would like to take a moment and make the following small edits to our nation in order to improve our health, environment, economy and education systems.

Elections:

• One national popular vote. No state or 'super' delegates.
• Nobody understands delegates; nobody thinks it's fair.
  

• Media/speaking opportunities at no cost to candidate; no personal funding of campaign, no donations. Like a huge round robin tournament (like all major team sports in the US)
• $5.5 billion spent by this year's presidential candidates so far.

Healthcare:

• Healthcare for all, paid by taxes. Like every other country.
• Health 'bill of rights' for kids.
  
• No junk food in schools (vending machines and cafeteria food).
  

Domestic Policy:

• Enforced separation of church and state; the US is not a Christian country.
• Protect same-sex marriage at the Federal level.
  
• Legalize and standardize the most popular recreational drugs (esp. marijuana and cocaine) via licensed vendors (like cigarettes).
• Affirmative action (and other "reparations") outlawed. Equal opportunity, less resentment.
  
• Path to citizenship for current illegal immigrants. Tighter borders.
• Guarantee Net Neutrality.
• Repeal Patriot Act. Seriously, people.
  
• Make higher education free to students, but raise admissions standards (like Australia).
  
• Drinking age lowered to 16 years old to let parents observe formative drinking years.
  
• Standardized education for teenagers about credit. Must pass a test to enter credit world.
• In addition to traffic tickets, award random cash prizes for motorists who obey the law. Opposite of a ticket (positive reinforcement).
  

Foreign Policy:

• Pay off foreign debt. Govt. needs to lead by example not to live beyond means. Until debt is paid, spending needs to be reeled in, just like personal finance.
  
• Any military action abroad must have consent of Allies (e.g. EU) and NATO (checks/balances).

Environment:

• Start shutting down coal-fired power plants. Open more nuclear plants. Like EU.
• Mandate one purely electric (not hybrid) model per make of car sold in US, priced according to middle of that make's range.
• Govt. sponsored car-sharing program.
• All new SUVs must be hybrid.
  

By the way, what political party does all this sound like? None? That's because we have a 2-party system, neither of which anyone can completely relate to. Voting in America is like shopping for a car but being forced to pick between Ford and Chevy. What if I want a damn Volkswagen? Too bad.

Seattle Rules, Exhibit 1: Patti Summers.

Okay, I've had enough fun on this blog at Seattle's expense that I feel it's time to give back to the place that has provided me with such a wealth of material. Let's focus on Patti Summers.

Patti, seen above in 2001, is, in my estimation, as good as Seattle ever got. Squirreled away in the bowels of the Pike Place Market (or "Pike's Place Market" as the fleece-clad locals are wont to say), Patti Summers' Cabaret was an urban Shangri-La. A David-Lynchian otherworld, filled with white lacquered chairs and stucco walls painted with Mediterranean vistas complete with painted window frames out of which one was supposedly gazing.

Patti's visage hung, commanding, at the entrance up until the club's demise in the early aughts. The picture was of Patti in her prime, perhaps in the late 1970s, however by the new millenium Patti was a tired husk of an entertainer: bloated, short-tempered and going through the motions.

Patti's cabaret had offered a full menu at one time, but toward the end there were only pizzas, frozen pizzas, heated up by Patti herself between sets of jazz vocal standards. There were three varieties: cheese, pepperoni and half-cheese-half-pepperoni ringing in at $9, $10 and $9.50 respectively. Drinks were $7 and were the domain of Patti's bass-playing husband Gary Steele who would hustle around the room taking orders while Patti threw the pizzas in. Soda was $3.50.

Most came for the irony, though some visited Patti in earnest. Perhaps they remembered her from the 70s when she was more Streisand-like. Patti herself was not interested in irony and was deadly serious about her operation. She frequently snapped at her customers and at the band. I think she lived in the back of the restaurant.

In the fall of 2001, Patti and Gary wrote a couple of 9-11-themed songs and even put out a two-song CD (it cost $10). My friend Paul bought the CD for me; it was he who introduced me to Patti's club and he knew how much I loved these two songs, us having heard them live many times. And so I leave you with Patti Summers' opus: the poignant and nuanced "Something Just Happened," perhaps the most amazing song about 9-11 ever (but only because Elton John hasn't yet written one to the tune of Candle In The Wind).

CLICK TO LISTEN:
Something Just Happened by Patti Summers (c. 2001 Summers/Steele)

"Freedom is golden and some people broke the rules..." -Patti Summers

Winter Of Our Discontents.

So I finally finished Wonderful Town, a collection of short stories from the past 80 years or so of The New Yorker, which somehow scores a 4.04 out of 4 stars on LibraryThnig. I do have to agree with the 4.04 though; it really is fantastic.

So last night I picked up a book that I bought from a used book guy on Beaver Street where Broadway turns into Cortlandt Street in Manhattan's Financial District. There are two really good used book guys who set up shop there on weekdays and a legendary lunch wagon vendor known around the area as "The Chicken Man." Oh and in the winter there's a soup stand with great split pea and ham soup. And of course within the aforementioned 100 feet of pavement also sits Yips, the granddaddy of all Chinese buffets, in its surreal basement setting at 18 Beaver.

Oh right, the book. It's called Civilization And Its Discontents, written by Sigmund Freud and published in 1930. My copy, scanned above, was printed in 1960. I think I paid $3.00.

Anyway, I started this book when I still lived in the city. Well, Brooklyn actually. I'm trying but I can't imagine a more boring, desolate book cover (click on it for a super-intense close-up). I have no idea why I bought it, but I'm really enjoying it. It's about the futility of man's search for happiness, the absurdity of religion, and, as Huey Lewis once said, The Power of Love.

Several passages, I thought, were not only breathtakingly honest but also seemed, eerily, to transcend the 75 or so years since being written. I found the following dose of realism particularly salient:

During the last few generations mankind has made an extraordinary advance in the natural sciences and in their technical application and has established his control over nature in a way never before imagined. The single steps of this advance are common knowledge and it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Men are proud of those achievements, and have a right to be. But they seem to have observed that this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier. From the recognition of this fact we ought to be content to conclude that power over nature is not the only precondition of human happiness, just as it is not the only goal of cultural endeavor; we ought not to infer from it that technical progress is without value for the economics of our happiness. One would like to ask: is there, then, no positive gain in pleasure, no unequivocal increase in my feeling of happiness, if I can, as often as I please, hear the voice of a child of mine who is living hundreds of miles away or if I can learn in the shortest possible time after a friend has reached his destination that he has come through the long and difficult voyage unharmed? Does it mean nothing that medicine has succeeded in enormously reducing infant mortality and the danger of infection for women in childbirth, and, indeed, in considerably lengthening the average life of a civilized man? And there is a long list that might be added to benefits of this kind which we owe to the much-despised era of scientific and technical advances. But here the voice of pessimistic criticism makes itself heard and warns us that most of these satisfactions follow the model of the 'cheap enjoyment' extolled in the anecdote-the enjoyment obtained by putting a bare leg from under the bedclothes on a cold winter night and drawing it in again. If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if traveling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the use of reducing infantile mortality when it is precisely that reduction which imposes the greatest restraint on us in the begetting of children, so that, taken all round, we nevertheless rear no more children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have created difficult conditions for our sexual life in marriage, and have probably worked against the beneficial effects of natural selection? And, finally, what good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?

That was all one paragraph. Actually only part of a paragraph. Freud is one bad motherfucker. I never knew he was so judgmental and poetic. It's really very beautiful.

ASCII Nicely.

Here's a fun way to nerd out. Render your girlfriend or pet's name in ASCII. Just because.

Happy Bunny.

I just discovered Happy Bunny. A client I was working with earlier this week had a Happy Bunny daily tear-off calendar and this was that day's HB. Flipping through, there were lots of good ones, but this is still my favorite.

Runners up include:
-your anger makes me happy
-it's fun to write things about the bitches i hate
-hating you makes me all warm inside

The creator, Jim Benton, has lots of other characters too. I can't wait until my daughter is old enough for this great stuff! First step: being born. Next step: becoming cynical and jaded, like her pa.

Hope for Humanity.

My world was rocked the other day when I discovered that the sweet, merciful Telecom Lords have finally answered my prayers: it is now possible to turn off those agonizing instructions after your voicemail greeting. The ones that tell callers how to leave a message. I guess there are still people left on the planet who have NEVER LEFT A FREAKING VOICEMAIL MESSAGE??

Maybe it's just Sprint that has made this possible, I'm not sure yet. Here's how:

call into your voicemail, then from the main menu:
personal options (3)
greeting (2)
change your main greeting (1)
add or remove caller instructions (3)

Then you'll hear the words you've only dreamed about:

"After your greeting the following instructions can be played:

'To leave a voice message, press 1, or just wait for the tone. To send a numeric page, press 2 now. At the tone, please record your voice message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up or press pound for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5.'

If you want these instructions to be played, press 1. If you do not want these instructions to be played, press 2."

PRESS 2!!!

If you would please take a few seconds to delete this monologue from your outgoing message. The world will truly be a better place.

Atheists Got It Tough.

Christians love to talk about how Atheists are depressed because they have no higher meaning in life. Without God, they figure, of course you'd be depressed and suicidal because there's nothing to live for. The way I see it though, it's because we value life so much that it pisses us off to see people embrace mediocrity the way they do (especially here in the US). To go outside and walk around is to drape yourself in bland. Unless you live in NYC, which is an atheist's Mecca.

Seriously, strip malls, fast food, obese people, traffic, bad art, ugly clothes: these all conspire to bring down a person who has one life to live. It would be like having your wedding day marred by a freak tragedy, killing several of your guests. Or waking up and brewing your favorite coffee only to find out your half-n-half is spoiled!

Spoiled is a good word. All these jerks walking around like life on earth is their time of suffering and they'll be rewarded with gold and chocolates or a big Sharper Image massage chair in the sky are spoiling it for the rest of us, the ones who feel this time is too precious to be spent wearing acid-washed jeans or pretending that it's okay to keep a president in office who utters the word "god." Or going to bad movies or watching commercials or talking to salesmen.

So listen up zealots, just because you have to get up early doesn't mean I have to hear your alarm through the wall every morning. N'um sayin'?

Love The One You're With.

Okay, after a hiatus fueled by the glee of newfound employment, I have returned to Earth and to my readers. Yes, I have readers! Not many, but a few. And I love you. You know who you are.

Since moving to Maine and becoming poor as crap, I've learned a new lesson: If you can't be with the one you love (honey), love the one you're with... do-do-do-do-do-do-DO-DO. I wrote that just now. What I mean is, there have been a few biggish things I've wanted or needed to change, replace, fix or upgrade, but without ANY money to spare, I've had to improvise.

First was my computer. I didn't have one until my friend (and talented graphic designer) Michael and his wife Sadie gave me their busted little iBook. I think Sadie had tripped on the power cord and yanked the computer off of a table or something, then stepped on it while trying to keep her balance.

The screen was cracked and the hard drive was broken. But I really needed a computer, being a computer tech and all. So I replaced the hard drive with one I had lying around my friend (and sousaphone player) John had a spare screen he gave to me. After a few harrowing procedures and many hours of work, I had a fully-functioning laptop.

Next, my one good pair of dress pants (handy for job interviews) that aren't totally baggy on me (i.e. the only pants I've purchased since being 50 lbs fatter) had a run of misfortune. I snagged them with a hulking piece of metal at work, then a button fell off, they became too dirty to wear, plus I realized they were too long. So I took them to the dry cleaner and had them shortened, cleaned and mended. I will finally get those out of hawk with my first real paycheck.

Reeve's iBook died the other day. The screen was all jittery and the whole thing kept freezing. Luckily I found a solution in an online forum which was to remove the case and super-glue 3 thicknesses of squares cut from an old credit card to a certain part of the chassis of the computer, thus applying pressure to a broken solder joint on the motherboard. It seems to work now.

My boots, like my pants, were getting tired. I went to mall-towne looking for suitable replacement pair but everything was either too expensive or else brown. So last night I got out the super glue and big metal glue clamps and repaired the soles, then bought some saddle soap for the salt stains and some black polish, some fancy $12 insoles from the grocery store and some waterproofing spray and I'll be damned if these boots don't have a new lease on life!

The living room was bugging me and so I did a major reshuffling of furniture and lighting and now it seems perfect. The dishwasher had been leaving everything really gritty since we moved in, so I researched what to do and cleaned it out and bought a special soap and now it's fine.

My espresso machine is old and was missing its portafilter handle. The front panel had snapped off and was hanging by wires. It was dirty throughout. So I replaced the handle, learned how to clean it, super-glued the face back on, found some tricks to making better espresso with my particular machine and now I'm loving it.

My cell phone was a burden. It was slow, unreliable, it had low battery life. I found an online update to the phone's software, uninstalled some programs I didn't need and now I'm really happy with it. My dining chairs were embarrassingly rusty, so I used the steel wool I bought for just that purpose TWO YEARS AGO and scrubbed them down.

I guess I could go on. What I started to say was "Look at what you can do with what you've already got, even though things seem broken or old!" but after all this typing, I guess what I'm saying is "Damn, I've been way more productive and optimistic since I've been on Prozac!"

Now... what do I do about the cat peeing on the floor?

Hell, Yes.

I totally scored the job I wanted.

After 5 months of hard-core job searching in and around Portland, Maine, I found what seems like a perfect job. I'm still in shock, and I'm technically working there on a trial basis to see if I fit well with the firm. But I have a job! And it's not shitty! My coworkers are a couple of nice and like-minded ex-New Yorkers. Stylish, even-keeled, intelligent, and definitely not anal IT Nazis. They didn't run a credit check on me, they didn't even call my references. We drank beer at the conference table during the interview!

The first thing I did was to quit my bar job. It felt really good. I'll have one more weekend there starting Friday, then that's it. The next thing I did was to tell my landlord I got a real job and that we won't have to move out of our apartment. That also felt good.

I still feel like I shouldn't let myself get too excited or feel too relieved because what if they hate me or I somehow fuck this up? For now, I just have to remember to get up earlier, shave more often, make a smaller pot of coffee and turn the heat down when I leave the house.

Seattle Sucks: Exhibit 4... The Ned Flanders Effect.

I hate the bombastic music that heralds the start of the BBC World Service at 9a.m. EST when WNYC switches over to the Brits for the hour. So I'm always running to the radio at 8:59 to turn the station before the melodramatic brass and string assault.

This morning I tuned to KUOW for my 9-10a.m. refuge from British accents. It's the station at the University of Washington in Seattle (where I used to work). The DJ's name was Derek Wang (pictured) and Reeve asked "Is that how they talk in Seattle?" I winced and said yes. She said "Oh my god! He sounds just like Ned Flanders!" I laughed because it's totally true.

Everyone in Seattle sounds like Ned fucking Flanders!

See for yourself. I made some clips:

Ned Flanders
Derek Wang

Still... better than a British accent.

[Also see: Seattle Sucks: Exhibits 1-3]

Declare The Pennies On Your Eyes.

Ever since my tax lien went public, I've been flooded with paper mail from credit doctors of all sorts. Usually they come in the form of an "official" document to be opened only by addressee, complete with faux red-rubber-stamps like "URGENT" or "ACTION TAKEN" betrayed only by their 'pre-sorted' postage.

But this one is different. Holy Crap! What kind of Year 3000 punishment is about to rain down on me? THE TAX MAN IS COMING! AND HE HAS REALLY BAD SKIN! I hope he doesn't trash my new 3D suit!

Hope Is A Two-Headed Flower.

Reeve's mom gave us this flower bulb back in November and we planted it right away. It soon sprouted, then grew slowly, unfurling its green arms. We went away over Christmas for a couple of days and left the heat in the apartment off. When we came back the plant had totally flopped over and wilted.

We staked it up with dry spaghetti and yarn and it collapsed again, looking completely defeated. Some time went by and we cut off a few creased and torn chutes, and eventually the remaining stalk started growing straight again, up toward the skylight.

Well, it got really big and tall but we weren't sure if it was going to bloom. Then, just a couple of days ago, out popped not one but two big blossoms. On the same day I received an email from someone I had contacted a few months back, asking if I had settled into a job yet here in Portland. He referenced a previous email which, strangely, I never received and said he was currently looking to add a fourth person to his consulting firm and could we meet the next day?

So we met yesterday and will meet again next week, but it looks like a very strong lead with a talented and hip group of ex-New Yorkers. And it pays well. Cross your fingers for me!

Miller & Willie.

CLICK TO ENLARGE
I called up and got an annoyed sounding woman's "Hello?" I asked if I had reached Andrew's Brewing Company. I heard a shuffling and then a man's voice came on "Hello?" I asked again and he confirmed that I had the right number. I asked whether they do brewery tours (with the hope of meeting the animals pictured on the beer label). That's when I learned the tragic news.

The man on the phone said the dog and cat (Miller and Willie) are long dead. But, he said, they led good lives and are buried in the backyard. Oh, and there are plenty of other dogs and cats running around the brewery these days, I was assured. I asked the man's name and he sounded confused. "Andy." Of course, what was I thinking? This brewery doesn't even have a website, let alone a staff.

Andy said he doesn't much like giving tours, but he will if he has to. He's two hours north of Portland, not too far from Bar Harbor. He said if I give him a few days' notice, he could show me around on a Saturday. He usually cuts wood all day on Saturdays, he said. But he'd come out of the woods to show me the place. And added that I shouldn't expect too much. "It's no Shipyard Brewery, but the beer's better at least."

I also learned that Miller the dog had a brother named Nick, as if I needed another reason to drink this beer. Seriously, with this label, I don't know how Andrew's isn't a major contender.

Brooklyn.

Brooklyn: I think about you every day, good and awful.

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Lien On Me.

Two liens actually. One federal and one state. It's okay though; they'll magically disappear from my credit report in 10 years. Poof!

I've been ruminating about my FICO score lately as I helplessly watch an assortment of nails expertly hammered into my credit coffin. The IRS action was the debt zenith of the recent months since my move to Maine. Other highlights include my bank closing my checking account following a "sustained overdraft" of $650; an ER bill sent to collections; a few cell phone and internet shut-offs; back rent on our apartment, vet and car repair bills, etc.

Of course a job-- even a modest job-- would set me on the road to recovery. I had a job, as a Traveling IT Guy, but I just found out that the company I was working for was less-than-clear about what I was being paid. The $1,300 check I was planning on using to pay my back rent appeared in my mailbox in the form of a $200 slap in the face. All of my jobs for the past two months, even jobs I drove 2 hours to get to, were paid at only $20 each (but were supposed to pay out at $55-$250 per job).

The only solid job lead I have now is with a large local employer who requires a credit check. Yep, I need "an excellent credit score" (according to my 20-year-old recruiter) in order to be considered for employment with this company. In fact, when this policy was introduced in December, the person in the now-vacant position was fired for having a bankruptcy on his report. It seems the company retro-assessed the "risk" of their current employees.

I also needed to provide a list, including dates, of all of my residences for the past seven years (I've had nine). And submit to a drug test. I have to wonder if there are civilizations whose members don't live and die by their credit histories.

I Feel You, Roz.

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Gravy Job.

Every week when I show up to work, the first thing I do is go to the break room to punch in. And every week there is some seriously nasty food sitting out just for us employees. There's always at least one heaping, congealed plate of sausage gravy. Here we see some bonus bits of bacon frozen in time.

There's also a note from the manager taped to the refrigerator encouraging us to help ourselves to any expired milk or yogurt we find. God I love this job.

Driven by Positive Thinking.

My "manager" at the hotel bar is about 25. This is his mug.

My girlfriend doesn't think this is funny and I sort of agree. She thinks it's just pedestrian and not any more clever than the average indie comedy film about hipster slackers working corporate jobs. I do agree, but when I post here, it's more about identifying things that depress me rather than trying to make people laugh.

After all, I really don't have or expect a readership. I've posted over 60 items and have had 3 comments from the world. I do this for me, for my current and future self. Maybe by trotting my pet peeves out, I'll realize their banality and move on.

I guess what I hate about this mug is that this guy has been effectively lobotomized at age 25. The mug is consistent with the rest of his personality and his "go get 'em-ness" as an assistant manager at an airport hotel. Perhaps what really bothers me is that:

a. I wish I was blissfully ignorant like him;
b. my inability to understand him reminds me of the alienation I feel as an American;
c. he earns more than I do;
d. he has more hair than me;
e. he has better credit than me;
f. he's younger than me;
g. he's on a career track.

Or maybe I just hate him because he's Driven by Positive Thinking.

Salad Bar Mitzvah.

CLICK TO ENLARGE
For my IT Guy job, I go all around the greater Portland, Maine area to retail and office locations as well as people's homes. Today I was sent out to a grocery store to fix this 42" plasma TV/computer setup that dangles from the ceiling above the store's salad bar.

The TV has a desktop PC bolted to the back of it and a black steel shell covering the PC, the whole streamlined mess suspended from a pole. The salad bar was near the meat counter, so when I arrived, I asked the meat person to page the store manager so I could check in and she did. "Amy Martino to the salad bar please." Suddenly, the poor woman at the meat counter was reamed a new anus by an assistant manager with a greasy comb-over.

"Don't EVER page the manager by their full name unless it's an emergency! That's the code for an emergency! It's 'MIZZ Martino' unless you're being robbed or you cut your hand off in the slicer... I swear to god, if you page the manager by their full name, you'll have four guys running over here preparing for an emergency!"

Then, presumably to call off the approaching mob, the comb-over guy snapped up the white phone and enunciated "MIZZ MARTINO... to the salad bar please... MIZZ Martino." The deli woman cocked her head and fidgeted with her ear. I wasn't sure if she was embarrassed for herself or for comb-over guy.

Anyway, the jobs were easy: remove the massive aerodynamic steel shell and replace some cables. Of course, until I fixed it, I didn't know what the screen would be displaying. I just perched on the stair ladder tinkering with wires and watching the weirdos parading through loading up their salad tubs with "salad," perhaps in the throes of a 2008 resolution. You know, salad-- pineapple rings, jello, pasta, croutons, dinner rolls, cheese, fruit medley, ranch dressing-- healthy stuff. Smashed into a gallon-sized tub, its top held on by rubber bands.

Maybe the vantage point of the stair ladder inflated my confidence, but I couldn't stop judging these people. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't. A goateed employee broke my trance. "LCD or plasma?"

"Sorry?"

"LCD or plasma?" this time nodding up toward the TV I was working on.

"Oh, ah, plasma."

"See, I want an LCD. My wife is making me wait a few more years cuz the price keeps coming down. 10 years ago one of them cost eight grand!" Then something caught his attention and he was gone.

As I worked, I reflected on the day before, and how I was completely out of money and had no gas in the car. I had ended up at a toll booth on I-95 without the $1.25 I needed to pass through. I rolled up to the guy and said "I don't have it!" He calmly wrote me a promissory note (!) and had me sign my name agreeing to mail $1.25 to the Maine Turnpike Authority within 5 days.

I felt so demoralized but was soon distracted by the fuel gauge dipping into uncharted territory. I was so sure that I was going to run out of gas that I was just running damage control, shutting down unnecessary drains on the electrical system-- stereo, headlights, GPS-- in an effort to get the last few meters out of what I had in the tank.

When I thought I felt the car lurching, I called 611 on my cell phone and had Sprint add roadside assistance to my monthly plan. I tried to sound nonchalant: "Hi, is there some sort of roadside assistance that Sprint offers? There is? Hmm, I think I might be interested in adding that today." The operator told me that in the event I ever need to use my new feature, all I need to do is dial #ROAD. Somehow I made it home without needing to.

Then, last night, I did some cash-in-hand Mac support for my film-maker friend David which allowed me to fill the tank with gas, maybe for the first time. I couldn't stop staring at the gas gauge after that. The needle looked so funny all the way up. I was so used to it being in the red or even below the red. I was hypnotized by it, smiling like an idiot.

These were my thoughts when the plasma screen came to life and I was snapped back into the moment, successful in my tinkering. The content on the screen was a bewildering arrangement of panels and frames displaying all kinds of information. Scrolling news, a slide show of supermarket specials, a tanned TV cook talking about lime zest. "I just love to use lime zest. Even when a recipe calls for lemon zest I use lime zest! When you're choosing your lime, choose the shiniest one. The shiniest lime will have the most juice."

Huh. OK. Well, that was fixed. So I wrapped the black shell back around the works and bolted it in place. I gathered up my tools and asked the poor meat woman if she'd please page Mizz Martino back to the salad bar and had her sign my completed work order.

Then, as I walked away I turned to look back at the salad bar. Several schlubs were gathered around smashing "salad" into their tubs, heads cocked up at the TV processing some amuont of the bombastic content. Maybe they were wondering what lime zest was.

I almost turned to leave, then was suddenly proud of what I'd accomplished. I came and fixed something that was broken and now these people were interacting with the thing. Though in the most banal sense, I was useful and felt like a real person. Just like with the gas gauge, I was hypnotized by the TV, smiling like an idiot.

Excellent Communications Skills.

When applying for jobs, I am always sure to call attention to my excellent communication skills. After a while though, it just sounds rote and I start to wonder if my skills really are all that great. But then I see something like this and I am reminded that people suffer at the hands of poor communicators.

p.s. People still use clip-art?

Nerd Spray.

Sometimes, my IT Guy job is hard. But sometimes I show up on site and there's nothing for me to do. Whatever the problem was has vanished. This frequently happens with printers. One of my first support calls was to a place that printed paychecks; both of their paycheck printers were broken. When I arrived, the printers were humming along nicely and there was apparently nothing that needed attention.

The woman in charge of the print room had fixed them by installing "maintenance kits" which was already about as much as I would ever know how to do. She was glad I was there anyway. "Well, now that you're here, maybe you could go through and do a preventive maintenance on these machines just to keep us going as long as possible."

I figured I might as well do something so I could say I was there and get paid for the call. All I could think to do was to get out my can of compressed air, open the hatches on the sides of the printers and thoughtfully spritz some air into the works.

My girlfriend calls it Nerd Spray. I made a point of getting the most industrial-looking brand at the electronics store here in Portland. The can is huge. It commands respect.

Yesterday I was sent to a local heat oil company to service a $7,000 Printronix "line matrix printer," the thing they use to print people's power bills. That's it up there on the left. When I arrived I was shown to the printer which was spitting out power bills at a steady pace. The error message on the screen that was called in had disappeared several hours ago. Out comes the Nerd Spray.

I got $80 for that call and $120 for the call to the paycheck place. It offsets days like today: I drive 90 minutes each way to New Hampshire, spending $25 on gas and tolls in order to swap someone's CD drive in their home PC for $45. And then on they way home, about to run out of gas, I slap down the last 4 quarters to my name on the counter of an off-ramp gas station "Put these on 3," as if I'm betting on a horse.

The downside is that the Nerd Spray jobs engender a different kind of stress, almost worse than the stress of "will I be able to fix this thing." It becomes "will I be able to pretend I know some advanced IT voodoo and put a curse on this thing so it won't break again in the next 24 hours?"

The Young People.

Just when I was beginning to think that I was living in a backwater here in Maine, along comes the Portland Press Herald to the rescue with a cutting-edge column called NXT: Next Generation, in which a not-too-old and not-too-black Minnesotan named Justin Ellis "brings you dispatches about 'the young people' and what they do."

OMFG!

Hat Trick.

For three consecutive nights-- an entire "work week"-- I had no customers at the bar.

Sure, the shifts are only 4-10, but come on. 18 straight business hours with NOT ONE PERSON. Except for my friend David who was out by the mall anyway and stopped in for a Coke because I guilted him.

Not making any money is one thing, as is being bored. But as you may know, I live for the random customers at this place. The occasional bar patrons at this deserted airport hotel are the only solace for a 33-year-old bartender making $135/week. With a BA and 10 years of professional IT experience.

Like last week. I had this guy at the bar, a real NYC artist with works in the permanent collections of the MOMA and the Whitney. He asked for an Absolut with grapefruit juice and soda, then ordered a pizza to the bar and split it with me. He was such a breath of fresh air: not only a living, breathing (smoking) customer, but proof that New York still exists even though I can't see it anymore. We talked about how embarrassed we are by humanity, about Chinatown, where he lives, and about DUMBO, where he has his studio.

He was witty, flamboyant and self-assured-- such the opposite of New Englanders. He seemed genuinely interested in me and how I ended up at the bar. We finished off the pizza, he fielded a few cell phone calls, had a couple more drinks, and signed his check which included a huge tip, even though I ate his pizza and complained to him most of the time.

And then he was gone, and I was again staring at this horrible carpeting and the piped-in musical counterpart to the carpeting. It was an elevator version of No Woman No Cry. The local 10:00 news was on the TV and I suddenly felt so depressed.

You Want Your Cancer Meds WHEN?!?!

As a freelance "IT Guy" working part-time for a 3rd party dispatch service, I frequently pose as an employee of companies I've never heard of, at places I've never been for people I will never meet. That's all pretty awkward, but the hardest part to get used to is showing up at a place only to be faced with technology I've never laid hands-- or sometimes eyes-- on. In my life.

Yesterday I drove 40 miles out of town to a Rite-Aid to "replace a part in a printer," according to my work order. I showed up and identified myself to the nearest cashier as an employee of Silver Fox Solutions. I was asked to wait, then greeted by a pleasant, big-haired manager named Darlene who told me to follow her to the broken printer.

I was expecting to be taken to some crusty manager's office when Darlene dipped through the waist-high swinging door of the photo department and nodded at a large metal structure. She hooked her thumbs through the belt loops of her high-waisted jeans and said "There she be. Have fun." and dipped back into the store leaving the door swinging and me staring at the structure, blankly nodding my head.

It turned out that the monolith I was to service was the main digital imaging workstation for the photo department-- the thing that prints the customers' digital photos. I read through the PDF I was given when I accepted the job and the document took me through disassembly of the steel shell that housed the printer and the replacement of the faulty part.

After three hours, victory was mine when, suddenly, an entire roll of someone's pictures began to spit out one after the other-- a dozen or so flash-washed images of a house cat in various stages of repose on what must have been a new scratching post, Christmas tree in the background.

I'm trying not to get too stressed by the randomness of these jobs. I'm not about to lose sleep if I'm responsible for some fat-ass not getting his boring Christmas pictures back before New Year's day, but today I had to go fix some weird drug-dispensing tower at a hospital cancer ward.

Of course when I took the job I was merely told that I'd be troubleshooting a USB peripheral on a computer. In fact, the computer in question controlled a variety of "peripherals" including locks on two drug refrigerators and the doors and drawers of the giant drug-dispensing tower.

I introduced myself to the receptionist at the cancer ward as an employee of Generation Next, and when a nurse showed me to the drug tower, she assumed I was intimately familiar with not only the workings of "the system," but also its quirks. "Of course the fridge door takes forever to pop open once the system unlocks it, but you know how long we've been complaining about that."

The tower was loaded with drug vials with names like Cyclophosphamide and Mitomycin. The drugs are very expensive, she told me, up to $9,000 for a single dose. I was there because the drawers and doors of the tower no longer opened when "the system" told them to. I sized the whole shebang up and down with the nurse still standing there. I nodded slowly, gravely, with narrowed eyes, opening and closing the doors of the cabinet softly as if feeling for some tell-tale resistance in the hinges. "Mm-Hm..."

Once the nurse left me alone for a few minutes and I got a feel for how all of this equipment worked in concert, my panic subsided and I took notice of my immediate surroundings. There, taped to one of the drug refrigerators, was one of those "humorous" line drawings you'd see in a DMV cubicle or stuck to a cash register at a hole-in-the-wall auto parts store, or perhaps at a Rite-Aid photo department: a 10th generation photocopy of a guy falling on the ground and bursting into laughter saying "You want it When?!"

Wait, what?

"Excuse me, nurse? Can I please have my chemo?"
"When would you like that, sir?"
"Um, well, can I get it now? I mean I'm here and everything. And I'm dying and stuff"
"Wait... YOU WANT IT WHEN?! AHH-HA-HA-HA-HA"

Anyway, somehow I fixed the tower and got out of there. This job is so weird. I keep thinking one day the jig will be up.